Ceiling Fan Sutra
It was one of those nights that despite my best intentions, I became embroiled in outrage by my teen’s attitude. All day I kept repeating to myself … He’s going to be tired when he gets home … as it was a Monday following a weekend with Dad. I reminded my husband and eldest daughter to make sure they remembered that Dan could be cranky today and that we should all have a bit more grace and compassion.
But Grace was not on the menu as I was preparing dinner tonight. Perhaps I had become over tired myself, dicing the vegetables for the stir-fry. Or maybe my outing earlier in the afternoon had worn me out. It’s funny how the mind still wants to figure out a reason … when there are an infinite number of interwoven causalities for any particular circumstance. What I know for certain, is that I became very angry, very quickly and shouted at my son over the loud stove-top exhaust fan.
But the bio-chemical fume would not end there. My mental story decided that I was equally irritated with my husband who should have been trying to help the situation as it spiraled unchecked into the anger-zone. By the time I perched myself on the little wooden stool at the side of my husband’s computer desk, my heart at started to skip. It was the perfect peptide storm! I was angry at my son, my husband and now my own heart for not doing things MY WAY.
I fled up to my room to use a biofeedback device in attempt to calm down my body – even if my mind was still a runaway train. As my pulse returned to a more pleasing rhythm, my mind began plotting how I was going to resolve this figment of war. Hundreds of thoughts raced through my brain that began with phrases such as:
But it was impossible for me to sustain any of the mental rationalizations. I knew in my heart that everything just happened, exactly as it did. And in that happening … it could not have been any other way. In that moment, there was no guilt, but more importantly there was no opportunity for blame. My mind game was so use to puffing my ego up with thoughts about how I was wronged. It was a pro at making a convincing case that things should not have happened. But the Teaching was too deep into my Beingness and there simply wasn’t anyone present who could believe these petty objections.
Despite, the failures of my mental discourse, I was keenly aware that my body was still holding on to the anger. I still felt angry at a very cellular level. My body was tense. I could feel the pain in the back of my shoulders and a ways up my neck. There was an uneasy turbulence in my intestines as if everything was moving at an erratic rapid pace. Quickly thoughts of You shouldn’t be feeling angry now that you understand the Teaching, flashed on my mental LCD. But this too was swiftly spied as just another trap set out to feed the egoic mind.
I laid my body down on the duvet that was folded at the foot of my bed and reached for the remote control to turn the ceiling fan light fixture off. The room was now only illuming with moonlight that poured down through the faux stained glass window at the top of our vaulted ceiling.
As I stared at the ceiling fan above that was slowly winding down, I thought of the Circle of Samsara. Going round and round in our suffering. A thought. An emotion. A peptide. Each of us doomed to repeat the cycle over and over and again.
I watched the five long blades became uniquely identifiable as the motor lost momentum. A moonbeam accentuated the tiny dust particles that began to float down and settle as the mechanical wind died down at last. Slower and slower the paddles spun counter clockwise. My thoughts seemed to slow down in lock step with the fan.
But just as I thought all movement had stopped … I watched an unexpected thing occur. The blades began to spin backwards. I watched mesmerized for a few more moments until all visible movement came to an end. Everything found its own balance. Not quite the way I had pictured in my mind, but a perfect equilibrium nonetheless. And all that I needed to do was to sit back, motionless, and watch the show.
